Software Engineering Manager in London

About Us

We are a world-class visitor attraction and leading science research centre. We use the Museum's unique collections and our unrivalled expertise to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today. We care for more than 80 million objects spanning billions of years and welcome more than five million visitors annually and 16 million visits to our website. Today the Museum is more relevant and influential than ever. By attracting people from a range of backgrounds to work for us, we can continue to look at the world with fresh eyes and find new ways of doing things. We employ 1100 staff in a variety of roles, all united by our vision of a future where people and planet thrive. We need everyone to have the passion and drive to help us with our mission to create advocates for our planet and inspire millions to care about the natural world. Diversity and inclusion matter to us.

Our vision is of a future where both people and the planet thrive. Diversity is one of our core values and we strive to build a workplace where everyone feels a sense of belonging. All new staff who join us learn about the importance of diversity and inclusion to the Museum and how to contribute to creating an inclusive environment. We know we have more to do, but we are committed to ensuring that everyone who works at the Museum feels they can thrive and feel valued and respected.

About the role

We are looking for a Software Engineering Manager to play a pivotal role within the Museum’s Software Engineering capability, leading and developing teams that deliver the services and platforms underpinning both our public-facing digital estate and core business systems. Your work will directly contribute to how millions of visitors engage with the Museum, while supporting our wider mission to inspire people to care about the natural world.

This is a people-focused leadership role, centred on building a high-performing, inclusive team and enabling engineers to do their best work. You will work closely with Lead and Senior Engineers, Product Managers, and stakeholders across the organisation to align engineering capacity with priorities, coordinate delivery, and ensure effective planning and execution across multiple workstreams. You will take ownership of resource planning and delivery coordination, balancing competing demands, tracking progress, and proactively addressing risks and dependencies. Acting as an escalation point, you will help unblock delivery challenges, support incident management, and contribute to effective governance and operational processes.

Alongside delivery leadership, you will shape ways of working across the team – embedding continuous improvement practices, using metrics to enhance performance, and fostering a collaborative, supportive environment where knowledge is shared and individuals can grow.

About you

You are an experienced and people-focused leader who is passionate about developing others and creating the conditions for teams to succeed. You bring a strong track record of line management, including recruitment, coaching, performance management, and supporting career development within software engineering teams. You are confident in coordinating delivery across complex environments, with hands-on experience of capacity planning, prioritisation, and stakeholder engagement. You are comfortable working across technical and non-technical groups, aligning competing priorities, and communicating clearly to diverse audiences.

While this is primarily a non-technical leadership role, you bring a broad understanding of modern software development and product-led delivery, enabling you to engage effectively with engineers and support informed decision-making. You are adept at identifying risks early, resolving issues pragmatically, and maintaining momentum under pressure. Motivated by purpose as well as performance, you are excited by the opportunity to contribute to a mission-led organisation with global impact. You value diversity and inclusion, and you take pride in building collaborative, respectful team cultures where individuals can thrive. With a focus on continuous improvement, you bring curiosity, fresh ideas, and a commitment to evolving team processes, delivery practices, and ways of working.

Thriving at the Museum: the way we work

We are proud to work at the Museum and have identified the qualities we all need to embody to reach our shared ambition. This sits alongside the Museum’s values and forms the framework for the way we work.

What we offer

• 27.5 days holiday plus 8 bank holidays (full time equivalent)
• Generous defined contribution Natural History Museum Pension Scheme (employer contribution 4 - 10%)
• Season ticket, bicycle and rental loan
• Life insurance
• Free admission to our exhibitions and many other paid exhibitions at museums, galleries and institutions across London and the UK.
• Staff discount at our Museum shops and cafes
• We offer a wide variety of training initiatives and opportunities to build skills. Investing in staff development is important to us, and we are ambitious about helping staff to grow and fulfil their potential.
• Affordable membership to the Civil Service Sports Council which offers a range of benefits including an extensive list of special offers and reduced entry fees at a selection of cinema chains, theme parks, theatres, retailers and supermarkets. It also provides entry to up to 300 English Heritage sites and other national treasures.
• Membership to our Sports and Social Association (for a small fee), which includes access to our in-house gym and clubs such as football, softball, table tennis and tennis and classes in Middle Eastern dance, yoga and Tai Chi.
• Hybrid working

We are working towards a vision where both people and planet thrive, and nothing gives a greater connection with this, than seeing first-hand, the visitors, scientific research and collections that all of our work is inspired by and working side by side with the teams delivering the visitor experience and events. We also recognise the benefits and flexibility that hybrid working brings. We operate a hybrid working model that requires regular, weekly attendance for this role, with the precise pattern of days on site and worked from home to be agreed with your manager.